Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Jeff Zucker, in one of his first acts after being named CEO of NBC Universal (GE), let YouTube (GOOG) know that he expected the company to follow up on its promises to provide technology to protect the copyright material of traditional media companies.

Referring to the site's ability to block hate speech and pornography, Zucker said, “YouTube needs to prove that it will implement its filtering technology across its online platform. It’s proven it can do it when it wants to. They have the capability. The question is whether they have the will.”

With the mandate to migrate programming to new digital platforms and distribution channels, Zucker is taking a hard stance against the company that is probably in his sights as one of the means to accomplish that goal.

With over a month gone by from when the company promised the protections to be in place and mounting pressure to increase revenue, this won't be the last time this frustration will be aired, even as we saw Viacom (VIA-B) do with insisting on the removal of all illegal clips recently.

Another slow-moving and really non-existent reality is the lack of progress with some media companies on licensing fees and sharing of ad revenue.

While this is obviously a warning shot made to get things going and implemented, it is something that probably will boil over if action isn't taken on the part of Google soon, in at minimum putting the protections in place.

It does make you wonder what it is Google's thinking. They obviously have the technology in place to do it, so it doesn't look good for them to make promises that they seem unwilling at this time to fulfill.

Either they're holding out as long as they can to make it look like they fought as long and hard as they could to their users so they aren't abandoned once the safeguards are in place, or they're feeling out how much leverage they have because of the importance of the potential platform for marketing and revenue represented by YouTube for traditional media companies.

I think they're finding out now how far they can go. The question really is what they're going to do and how long they're going to play this cat-and-mouse game. It could get interesting pretty quickly if things stay as they are.

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